Attend citizen toolkit lecture before General Election

JIM TOEDTMANHistoric City News readers will want to attend acclaimed journalist Jim Toedtman’s lecture titled Finding Solutions to Local Issues: A Citizen’s Toolkit for This Election Year on Tuesday, September 20th.

This timely session will take on topics including the communications explosion as well as the new information landscape and its impact on our politics, offering advice to voters wrestling with the issues, the personalities and the hyperbole in this tumultuous election year.

“The bottom line is that citizens have never had so much responsibility as they do this year,” Toedtman said. “The good news: it’s not a hopeless task.”

During the 2016-2017 season, Flagler will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Community Lecture Series, which was founded in 2007 to offer the local community an opportunity to explore topics covering arts, religion, politics, culture, history, economics and more with experts on the College faculty. The theme of the series this year is Challenges at the Crossroads: Finding Solutions to Local Issues.

The programs take place monthly. Tickets are $5 per person for a single lecture, or $15 for four lectures. Active military personnel may attend at no charge. Lectures begin at 10:00 a.m. in the Ponce Hall Solarium at Flagler College, 74 King St. Reservations are not required. The lecture will last approximately one hour and will be followed by a coffee and pastry reception.

Toedtman is recognized for his distinguished career as a reporter and editor. Before taking the editorship of AARP Bulletin, he was editor of The Baltimore News American, executive editor of the Boston Herald and managing editor of Newsday. He has covered local government, Congress and the White House and has reported from three continents. At Newsday, he was a member of the reporting team that won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize, and he helped direct Newsday reporters who won Pulitzers in 1993 and 2002. He was named editor of the AARP Bulletin in 2005, and in this role he was consistently recognized for excellence in covering a range of public policy and consumer issues. Toedtman graduated from the College of Wooster and earned a master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University. He also studied at the University of Queensland, Australia, as a Rotary Foundation Fellow. In 2012, he accepted the directorship of the Flagler College Forum on Government and Public Policy.